An Astonishing Moment from a Bluegrass Legend

In bluegrass circles, it is being called “The Moment,” and some of the people who saw it wept. I heard about it from Gillian Welch. It involved the master guitar player Tony Rice, who was giving a speech late last month in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the occasion of being inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Fame. Rice, who is sixty-one, is a revered figure in bluegrass. Following the path of his own hero, Clarence White, he established the guitar as a lead instrument in bluegrass, the way Charlie Christian helped the guitar step from the rhythm section in jazz. An admirer of Coltrane and Jascha Heifetz, he played percussive, blues-inflected lines that found unexpected, and sometimes startling, trails through the chord changes. The way certain singers enunciate clearly, so that every word is heard, Rice played with a deep technical command, so that no note was ever lost. He released his first record in 1973, and the shadow of his articulate and forceful style falls across the playing of nearly all other bluegrass guitarists. If you play bluegrass guitar, you have to come to terms with Rice the way portrait photographers have to come to terms with Avedon.

Rice lives in North Carolina. He spends a lot of time listening to music, taking photographs, and restoring Bulova Accutron watches, which operate by means of a tuning fork. He has lost a brother and two stepsons over the past ten years or so, and seems to have removed himself by degrees from the world. Very few people are allowed to come to his house, and most of his friends correspond with him by texts, only some of which he answers. Meanwhile, his appearance has grown severe. He used to be boyish and lanky, and now he is gaunt, and his face is drawn. He looks like an old miner. He has grown his hair nearly to his waist, and he wears it drawn back, but on top the strands are spaced like beach grass on a dune. He appears to have withdrawn physically into some weathered and essential version of himself. All that is superfluous has been shed, like land around a great house that has been sold off until only the house remains. He wears suits when he performs, but the clothes hang like shrouds, and he looks less like a gent than a scarecrow. In addition, his hands are afflicted with arthritis and playing has become sufficiently painful that his timing, always precise and effortless, is no longer entirely dependable. He makes mistakes and drops notes.

Years ago, Rice was also a superlative singer. He had a rich split tenor that was both assertive and intimate. A musician recently described it to me as being like the sound of a trumpet. Rice hasn’t sung for almost twenty years, though. He developed something in his vocal cords called muscle tension dysphonia, which means that his vocal cords are intact, but they don’t work. The standard for bluegrass singing is a high, masculine voice, established by the form’s founder, Bill Monroe, and Rice has said that he damaged his voice by straining for years to reach pitches higher than his natural range. His voice turned breathy and gravelly and completely unreliable. It was as if it had been scraped and torn and had holes shot through it. Rice has said that he doesn’t miss singing, but he has made fitful attempts with doctors and therapists to recover his voice. Nothing took.

The organizers of the event in Raleigh didn’t know for sure until shortly before the curtain rose that Rice would appear. He was introduced by the musicians Sam Bush and Peter Rowan, both of whom have worked extensively with him. He was wearing a pink shirt too large for his thin neck, a red-and-blue striped tie, and a blue suit, with a detail I have never seen before: what appeared to be satin, or maybe grosgrain, lapels. He was terribly thin, and his face was shining in the lights. He looked like a man returned from the desert to deliver a message.

He thanked everyone in a voice that sounded like that of someone with a terrible sore throat or one ruined from smoking. Now and then, a syllable fell away, and you heard only his breath. “There is a very dear friend of mine and singer that is having voice trouble right now,” he continued. “A great human being, with a great soul, and a great talent, somebody I love beyond belief, is my dear friend Alison Krauss.” He said that he woke up recently and “decided to try a few things with my voice, to see if anything at all could happen, even just a little stepping stone, toward restoration of the voice. And I tried a few things. And if my heavenly father is willing right now, I might be able to show you a little bit of what I’ve been working on.”

The audience applauded. Rice held his right hand to his head and said, “This is not easy.” He tapped his right temple. “It takes some brain power to get into this, so bear with me a second.” He looked off into space and hummed softly. “But I want to,” he said, and stopped, as if to collect himself. He began again, “Be able to tell Alison that now”—and he held his right hand to his chest—“I am speaking in my real voice.” It was smooth and resonant and seemed to come from his chest instead of his throat. The change was as startling as a card trick. People began to applaud and cheer and some of them stood, as if in a congregation. Rice looked down, squinting. He said, “Thank you so very much. I’m giving it the best I got.”

“You got it, brother,” a man yelled.

Rice started again, haltingly. “I figure maybe, if I can keep this up, that one day again maybe I’ll be able to do w-w-what I have missed at times for nineteen years now, which is to express myself poetically through music. And if I can keep this momentum going, maybe one of these days, I’ll be able to do that again.”

The audience applauded, and some of them whistled and shouted, and this time all of them rose. He spoke for several more minutes, thanking a few more musicians and saying that it was important to retain the essence of real bluegrass music. The tendons in his neck looked as taut as cables. When he finished, he gave a two-finger salute and said, “I love you all. Thank you so very much.” Then he made a little bow and stepped from the circle of light and left.